LETTERS
Sick transit
Sir: What a state general practice has come to!
Your letters page (13 August) has two letters from self-satisfied GPs, Drs Mackay and Howard, both of whom betray their worthy profession by showing how much more concerned they are with themselves than with their patients.
Dr Mackay writes fulsomely of advances which allow him to fund from the public purse improvements in 'premises, staff and facilities generally'. No mention of how the reduction in the proportion of their income that comes from the capitation fees enables them to ignore the interests of the patient. When my father entered general practice (in Ladbroke Grove) in 1946, morning surgery started at 7.30, evening surgery often did not finish until nine or ten o'clock. I was born at 7.30 p.m., described all my childhood as 'right in the middle of evening surgery'. 'Open all hours' was the accurate description then. Now it is 'closed all hours', and you may see the doctor some days hence at this convenience, if you can get a day off. A profession has come to a sorry state when it no longer serves its clients.
On the other side of the page, Dr Howard berates Mrs Worsthorne for being SO unfeeling as to call out a doctor on a Saturday! How could she be so thoughtless as not to come and dance attendance on the doctor at his waiting room? But does he not realise, with his great experience, that people are confused and irrational when they are in pain? Or has the £50,000 or so it cost to train him been completely wasted? In my father's day, such doctors would not have lasted long in practice, because the patients thought they knew a bad doctor when they saw one and went elsewhere.
Christopher Heneghan
14 Woodberry Avenue, North Harrow, Middlesex
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